Who'd Be a Copper?

by Jonathan Nicholas

  ‘The applicant is a fairly impressive looking young man of good height and build. He has a good conversational ability and has apparently mixed a very great deal with many types and nationalities. He has travelled all over the world and prides himself upon his independence.’

  He made no reference to the tomatoes in my dad’s greenhouse. The sergeant from Central Police Station had written:

  ‘Did well on day’s tests. Very confident with slightly familiar attitude. Mature with broad experience of life through worldwide travels. Speaks well and converses freely.’

  Finally, in summing up, another sergeant had written:

  ‘Panel felt if he could come to terms with discipline he has a lot to offer the service. His application form is one of the most comprehensive that I have seen and probably gives some insight into his character. I would recommend that he be considered for appointment.’

  In the autumn of 1983 amid widespread controversy the US Air Force delivered dozens of cruise missiles in some highly visible wooden crates to RAF Greenham Common. It was the height of the Cold War, and President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were constantly in the media standing together, reaffirming their determination to protect the Free World by importing ever more American nuclear weapons into Britain. I drove by the protesters’ ‘Peace Camp’ surrounding the airbase when I visited a friend in Reading, and saw lots of well-intentioned women living rough in flimsy shelters made from plastic bags.

  I was dealing with my own personal battle too: I was trying to quit smoking. It was almost five years to the day in November 1978 when I smoked my first cigarette in the factory at Kibbutz Dafna in Israel, during my first night shift on the dreaded Conveyor. But now I was determined to quit, so I bought myself some stick-on merit stars from Woolworths in Retford and made a chart of each long and agonising day without a smoke. It seemed to work. Those were the days before e-cigarettes and nicotine replacements. It was cold turkey and nothing else.

  I ran around the village each day and went swimming at night in order to give myself some incentive to become healthy again. I was thin when I was travelling but not particularly healthy. In our very fat-conscious society today people frequently mistake being thin for being in good health, but this is simply not true. I’ve always run though. I used to run to school. Wherever I travelled if I was eating reasonably well, which wasn’t all that often, I’d run.

  Caught up in Cold War fervour while waiting to hear from the police, I joined the local branch of the Royal Observer Corps. The primary reason of course was that if the bomb dropped, as it seemed it might, I’d know where all the fallout shelters were, and I’d have ready access to them. Every week I would make my way to a secret location in the corner of a farmer’s field where there was a very discreet steel hatch in the ground, standing slightly proud of a low concrete base. You’d never have guessed it was there. I’d climb thirty feet down a metal ladder to meet the other members of the team. Amid a huge stockpile of tinned food and bottled water we would play out a possible scenario which we hoped none of us would ever see.

  Wherever a nuclear weapon detonated nearby, one of us would have to go up to the surface and place a sheet of radiation-absorbent card in a metal frame, and turn it towards the blast. It was unclear which of us was to do this erroneous task, as clearly whoever it was would have probably been blown to smithereens or at the very least glow in the dark for days to come. The idea was that the direction of the fallout could then be predicted, thereby forecasting where the worst of the radiation would make landfall. This information would then be passed on to the authorities using a black Bakelite telephone. The government would be safely ensconced deep underground of course, as we were, well out of harm’s way.

  It occurred to me that if nuclear war did happen, the government would survive perfectly intact but there’d be bugger-all left on the surface to govern, just a burning wilderness of ruined buildings and millions of dead people. At the time of course it all seemed very logical. Nuclear Armageddon was a real possibility in those days. In reality, I suspect we would have all just brought our families into the safety of the nearest secret bunker and waited it out, while everyone else on the surface burned to a crisp. This was strongly hinted at by some of the older members of the local Corps, along with the undeniably interesting prospect of being trapped underground for weeks or months with one or two lovely looking young ladies. But even with that thought in mind, I’m very glad it remained at the theoretical stage. One of the most unrealistic elements of disaster movies with an ‘end of the world’ scenario is they always portray cops and other emergency services carrying out their duties right up to the end. Do you think for a moment these people would abandon their own families in such circumstances?

  Finally in December 1983 I received a letter stating I was to attend a whole day of interviews and tests the following month at the local police training centre. Two days before this letter arrived, on 17th December 1983, a huge car bomb exploded outside Harrods in central London. A warning had been given and the police attended. Four Metropolitan police officers had been approaching the suspect vehicle on foot just as it exploded. They had probably been thinking about grabbing a bacon cob and a cup of tea a few moments before. Three were killed outright, and one survived but lost both his legs. Three members of the public were also killed, one of them an American citizen, visiting London for some Christmas shopping. Ninety other people were injured. The Provisional IRA later apologised for the loss of life, a rather cynical thing to do that immediately makes you wonder why it was done in the first place.

  Not only was it the height of the Cold War, but the IRA was involved in their murderous campaign of violence across the British mainland. It occurred to me that if I were to become a police officer I would become a ‘legitimate target’, as the security forces were known.

  I thought of Kiryat Shmona, Kibbutz Dafna in Israel, and all the air raids I’d been caught in when I lived there in 1978 and 1979. Yasser Arafat and his merry band of murderous thugs in the PLO had indirectly tried to kill me several times and had failed. The odds of being hit were slim. So I never gave it another thought.

  INTERVIEWS AND TESTS

  EPPERSTONE MANOR

  I arrived at Epperstone Manor, the beautiful but discreetly crumbling training establishment belonging to Nottinghamshire Constabulary, at 8.30am, January 6th 1984. Epperstone was a typically quiet English village which had a pub, a post office and perhaps a few dozen houses mostly strung out along the main road through the village. There were two short rows of police houses across the road from the manor, used for residential training courses.

  When on a training course of more than a day or so you could live there if you wished, in that beautiful quiet village, free of charge. The manor was exactly as it sounds, an old manor house, the size of a small stately home. It was a wonderful building with beautiful views across sweeping lawns and rolling countryside. Rows of crown-topped terracotta chimney pots on the steeply sloping roofs were an indication of huge stone fireplaces in each room. There were stag’s heads hanging from dark oak-panelled walls, with a wide dark wood staircase, each step of which creaked wonderfully underfoot. Huge oil paintings adorned the walls on very thick picture wire, immaculate red carpet covered all the floors and there was an almost palpable atmosphere of tradition and sense of purpose. This was the focal point of the training establishment and it evoked an immediate sense of awe and respect.

  I met six other male candidates, and after a very civilized cup of tea in delicate china cups with the force crest on each side, we were ushered into an oak-panelled room off the main hall. Desks had been laid out, carefully spaced, and we sat down. There were eight places, and seven of us, so maybe one person had changed his mind? We were handed five papers consisting of various written tests: logical reasoning, mathematics, spelling, grammar and vocabulary. There was also a current affairs paper, with questions such as ‘What is Greenham Common?’

  Half an hour
into the tests the eighth, missing candidate arrived. He sauntered into the room, smiling rather witlessly, taking his seat in a conspicuously unhurried fashion, looking blankly around as though settling down for a picnic on the beach. I wondered how anyone so remarkably gormless could even apply for the police let alone arrive so late. I assumed that perhaps he wasn’t too bothered about it. I assumed correctly because about eighteen months later he resigned.

  At 10.30am we had all finished the written tests and were led out of the main doors across a small car park and around the corner towards a row of garages. Opposite these were some changing rooms and showers. We filed inside and were instructed to change into PT gear we’d brought with us from home. There followed a timed run of a mile and a half. This length was quite fortuitous as it was roughly the same distance I’d been running almost every day since I returned home in April.

  We stood around waiting for the off like eager race horses, our breath clouding around us in the freezing air. Then at a gentle jog we were led past the huge wrought-iron gates by an instructor who turned right down the main street towards the village. The sky was wonderfully clear on what was a perfectly crisp January day. When I lived in Brisbane I’d occasionally long for a day such as this, just once in a while, during the long, sweltering months of summer.

  I noticed permanently shaded areas of grass by the road had become thick frosted spikes and the leafless branches of the trees strained skywards like skeletal fingers, everything utterly lifeless in the middle of winter. The air was so cold it burned the back of my throat like boiling water at every breath. After a few hundred yards the PT instructor, a diminutive ginger-haired chap who clearly possessed bionic legs, turned left and started up a hill called Chapel Lane. It was very steep and known locally as Chapel Hill.

  The instructor, in his sharply pressed shorts and sleeveless vest, began to draw ahead, as was no doubt expected, but I was fairly close behind him, leading the others in the group. Once we had reached the top of the hill panting furiously like a pack of hunting dogs we turned around and ran back down towards the manor. The instructor disappeared ahead and a few minutes later he was standing at the gates stop-watch in hand as we arrived. I was first to trudge into view and finished with a time of seven minutes and twenty-eight seconds, which was pretty good. I’d forced myself to such an extent that I felt quite sick. My usual time for such a distance was about ten minutes. The others returned quite spaced apart, also looking red-faced and exhausted. All members of the group completed the run in less than eleven minutes. Twelve minutes was the pass-mark.

  There was a small gym area across from the changing rooms. Thick mats had been laid out across the concrete floor, next to some free weights and static equipment. We were then asked to perform a series of sit-ups, push-ups and squat jumps against the clock. I didn’t have a huge amount of upper body strength at the time so I didn’t do particularly well. A chap called Tony did the best out of all of us at these exercises, and seemed ultra-fit. We then had a communal shower. There was some serious talk as to what might follow. The conversations were guarded and restrained, and very formal in nature, almost as though this too was being assessed.

  We returned to the classroom where we’d taken the written tests, and the chairs were now laid out in a semicircle to the front of the room. I felt invigorated from the run so I quite enjoyed the next task. We were each asked in turn to stand up at the front and give a short unprepared talk of two minutes’ duration about ourselves. It was clear that we formed quite an interesting bunch. One had just left the Royal Navy, one the Merchant Navy, university, private industry, one was already in the police as a cadet, and there was even a semi-professional footballer.

  A group discussion followed, while people with clipboards watched us at the back looking shifty, jotting things down occasionally. The subject of the discussion was: ‘The Greenham Common peace protesters’. I contributed where I could, and at least as much as anyone else, acutely aware that at least some contribution was expected. I wondered what the assessors were looking for. Everyone’s opinions were safely far from extreme, and generally supportive of the government of the day. No doubt if one of us had said: “All those scruffy lefty protesters should be dragged away by the hair and shot” or even at the other end of the spectrum: “They’re right to protest, nuclear weapons are wrong and so are Reagan and Thatcher and this fascist government”, then there would be some conspicuous scribbling on the clipboards. I suspect we all realised this, so we made our observations very measured, polite and sensible.

  I enjoyed the morning, and felt reasonably confident about my performance. Lunch in the canteen was excellent: battered fish with cheese, (always fish on a Friday – did they assume we were all Catholic?) chips and mushy peas, then apple pie and custard. As candidates, this was all supplied free of charge using meal tokens, issued to us on arrival. Tea followed, in the force liveried cups and saucers. It was all extremely civilised, and we were made to feel very special as a result. We felt honoured at the prospect of joining Nottinghamshire Constabulary, an organisation that was clearly proud of itself.

  The canteen was a short walk from the manor house along a flagged path which cut through pristine lawns overlooking superb grounds. There was a bowling green, some hard tennis courts, and further down a grass bank, a rugby field and cricket pitch. At the very bottom a line of tall mature poplars marked the boundary of the extensive grounds. It really was a beautiful setting. One of the candidates, Dave, a very tall chap with a bushy moustache, offered his Embassy Number 1s around the table. Sadly, after several weeks’ successful abstinence I relented and took one. We sat around the dining table smoking and chatting about the day. The final part was still to come: the interview.

  We were called in turn into a very plush office in the manor. I was standing gazing out of the window when my name was called, my mind wandering back to my travelling days. I was also wondering who the family had been that had occupied the manor years before, and what had become of them.

  I spent thirty minutes talking mainly about myself. A small, bearded, uniformed inspector listened to my rambling as he sat ensconced behind a huge, polished wood desk, his torso squeezed tightly into a crumpled white shirt. He glared at me with a wide toothy grin across his shiny face. He wasn’t a bad looking bloke I suppose, with features that made him look like a cross between Stewart Granger and Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown. He had an air of authority that he was clearly aware of, and which gave him the demeanour of Baron Bomburst from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He was flanked on one side by a woman who was as plain as an old pit boot, which wasn’t helped by her dark clothing. She did very little other than smile a lot and occasionally make brief notes. A smaller, thin man in plain clothes who I believe was also an inspector sat at the other side of the Baron. He also made notes but appeared more like one of those nodding dogs you might see on the rear parcel shelf of an old car, moving his head around to some inaudible rhythm.

  They looked at me intently as I was asked about my parents, my aspirations, hopes, fears and my many previous jobs. I was asked more than once whether I would be able to handle the discipline. I reminded them of my four years in the air cadets, and how I’d become a glider pilot in record time at RAF Lindholme (now a prison) and then a private pilot of aeroplanes, which in itself requires a not insubstantial amount of self-discipline. I hoped that I came across as quietly confident, rather than cocky or arrogant.

  I waited outside, and in only a few minutes the Baron bounded out of the room. He was smiling broadly and his generous belly completely obscured his belt as though he had a medicine ball under his clothing. His shirt buttons were bursting under the pressure and I could see masses of greying hair straining to reach out from his distended belly. I didn’t like to tell him his shirt was hanging out on the right side like a fallen corner flag. I’ve no doubt he was probably a nice man, and he certainly commanded a presence, even if he did have egg stains and rice pudding globules on his tie. He gripped my hand and s
hook it warmly:

  “You’ve been successful today. Your application will continue, well done. We’ll be in touch for the final interview,” he said, loud and confident like a miniature Brian Blessed.

  FORCE HEADQUARTERS

  The following Tuesday I attended a doctor’s in the centre of Nottingham for a chest x-ray, followed by a final comprehensive medical examination. I was stunned at the blackness of my lungs, but I was told it wasn’t bad, for a smoker, probably due to all the running. But it left a deep impression on me, and it provoked further determination to quit permanently. Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd was prompted in a similar manner apparently, when he heard himself cough on their 1975 album Wish You Were Here. You can hear him clear his throat if you listen carefully at the start of the title track.

  The time I spent between returning home from my travels and starting my police career was quite a dark period for me. I was ready to work hard in my new job but felt frustration as every day passed while living in a state of limbo-like penury. I found it extremely tiresome living from one dole cheque to the next. I could only imagine a whole life lived in such a way to be stifling and soul-destroying. Funds were almost always inadequate and there was little to do other than exist on a very basic level. While travelling around foreign countries this penurious condition was acceptable to me as part of the experience, but now at home I felt anxious and even a little bitter that I was effectively excluded from mainstream society, without a steady job and all the positives that come with it. This gave me a real taste of a life on benefits in Britain, and some lasting sympathy for those who are genuinely trapped in this awful lifestyle. It was now 1984 and I’d been home, and on the dole, since April the previous year.